Open-Source and We

A survey on Open Source Software and their relevance S V Ramu (2002-04-21)

Internet - The Great Leveler

The vastness:
One must be closeted in their own world of mailing and online newspapers
to not to notice with awe the vastness of Internet. Even some passing usage of
Google like search engines should have convinced you how vast and deep the
Internet is. Many reports say that even the best search engine, Google, is
hardly scratching the surface of the enormous amount of information that is
available in the cloud, called internet; and it is fast growing.

Humbling experience:
Many a times, I try to do something new, and while searching something in the net,
stumble upon a treasure trove, that is both inviting and disappointing. Even
my cherished ideas, I find, is already researched to death and even made as
a standard! Internet has been an eye-opener in many a sense. How many times have
I found just the clarification I wanted, when I'm stuck with an error message.
More we browse the net meaningfully and exploratively, more will we be humbled,
and hence we will be that much smarter by taking our 'Greatness' lightly.

'Everything is already done':
In fact, humbleness is not at all an issue. You will be humbled through and
through alright. The most common issue is our depression that all our 'indigenous'
ideas are so eagerly ripped and patched so many times by so many people, that
we wonder if there is anything new at all possible.

Small World community:
The world has become so small, that we are assured that there is really not much
difference between people in USA or India or Antarctica. But for our Geography
and History, we all behave similarly when given similar inputs. Human conscience
becomes one collective whole, as is the knowledge becoming one big common store.

Open Information:
Maybe due to the need for belonging, or due to the lure of world wide market,
Internet is the most massive distributor of knowledge, after the invention of
printing press. Never before in history has there been so little inhibition to
share so much.

Commonness of thinking:
This openness and ubiquity of information is so acute, that thinkers doubt whether
the rich diversity of human civilization will survive at all. Will not many smaller
but weaker concepts die out in this maddening race? The replay seems to be, should
we worry? 'Let the best idea win' seem to be the philosophy of forced choice.

Will human psyche accept?
Whether or not we accept this seemingly complete erasure of individuality, Internet
is here to stay. On the other hand, if you notice the whole proceeding from many
leader's perspective, there are heroes and heroines still, who rise above this
death like equalizer and leave behind their mark. Maybe Internet looks intimidating
only due to its newness.

Great Information store:
Even leaving alone the encyclopedia effort of GNU and the great Project Guttenberg,
the internet itself is behaving as one huge encyclopedia. From meaning of words to
research paper, the internet knowledge content is mind boggling. Literally everything
is out there. And once the Unicode based multi language repositories are famous
enough, the milieu of ever expanding information store, called Internet, will only grow.

Greatest querying possibility:
Storage doesn't mean usage. But this great store is highly used too. What with
the great list of search engines, as Microsoft once quiped, the internet
is much easier to search, than even our machine. When was the last time you felt
that you'll as well look up net for the latest, than trying to remember where you
stored it? Now-a-days I even don't remember the web site addresses (URL), as
Google usually gives that with few easy keywords.

Search before you Invent:
Having been so many times put off by internet's preemptiveness, I now refrain from
starting anything, unless I search the net. The best policy seems to be:
Be humble - Know your strength - Know more, but think indigenously. Like the
PhD. work we need to know the current 'literature' and trends before starting our
own. Doesn't that sedate our creativity? It will, if you are not alert. As usual,
where learning should stop and where dreaming should start, is the golden line,
and the copyright of each geniuses.

Opensource projects and Internet:
Internet's hitherto unseen spin-off for the common man is the openness. Though
GNU started roughly two decades before, it is only after the internet becoming
famous, that more and more open source projects are springing up. Mesmerized
by the unusual stability of open source products, and the unbelievable speed,
Group development is becoming the order of the day.

The Open-Source Enthusiasm

The Joy of sharing:
After all these years of using Shrink wrapped software and pirated products,
one might wonder, why should Opensource model be such an hit. The simple answer,
as Richard Stallman rightly noted, 'The Joy of Sharing'. Unencumbered by licensing
obstacles, and humbled by the fact that so many minds have gone into a product,
one gladly shares the modifications with their friends and the world.

The honor of peer acknowledgement :
We always want to belong, and be praised. And not by anybody, but our heroes, our
peers. What best way is there to get this praise but by sharing our inventions.
If for years the research community has been growing with peer pressure
alone, why can't we be inspired too?

'Many eyeballs makes the code shallow':
The Open Source community keeps the above phrase as their slogan. All projects,
once crossing their inception phase is vastly benefited by the many eyes that is
looking into the code. Every body feels that the project is their own, which it is,
and hence strive to perfect it. Thus more stable the application becomes. And as the
whole thing is with the community, the cost is drastically sliced.

The Vacuum fills up faster:
It doesn't need a genius to proclaim that you can pour more sugar into a jar, only
when there is space in it. A clogged mind is not fertile enough for newer thoughts.
Many a times secretes clog our brain, whereas healthy sharing, contrary to most
business mindset, in fact frees our mind and hence progresses. Does more
competition means less individuality? If so how would you classify, Marc Fluery of
JBoss or the 'gods' themselves, Richard Stallman and Linus Trovald? The greatest
teaching of the internet age is to share and hence grow. Your peers in your
domain can teach by challenges, more than all the books you can muster.
Being light, pruned of all intellectual burden, a searching mind can think more.
These days you must know how to search, how to give away, how to be together,
and above all, how to still remain 'you' and think ahead.

The Open-Source Tools

The Free Tools :
Slowly I'm finding that most of my daily computing chores is accomplished fully
by free, open source software. I have my GCC compilers, Java of course;
I have my jEdit text editor with syntax highlighting and myriad plugins; there
is my sophisticated GIMP - The Image editor, which apart from allowing me to
draw and startle, allows me to store them in the open and popular PNG format;
With the W3C standards like HTML, CSS, XML and XSL, most of my publishing data is
non-proprietary; of course the Linux, the FREE operating system, which is growing
day by day against its archrival MS Windows; I have my Netscape and Mozilla web
browsers, with all its trail blazing XUL skins; Netscape mail client,
the AbiWord free document editor with XML data formats, now the OpenOffice,
and StarOffice; And once you touch the GNU utilities, you have a treasure trove,
with which you can convert image formats, create and execute make files, and much much
more;

The Hacker's dream:
As it had been redefined, a hacker is not a cracker. A Hacker is a respected nerd.
A wiz in his/her art and loves it. For a hacker these days, the options to learn and
set up an office is plentiful. They can use the above tools, rip it open and see its
guts, emulate it, bug fix it, improve it, and if endowed enough, even create a new one
of their own with a nicer twist. For nothing they can set up an environment. Of
course they might have to pay sometimes, but once paid, like their computer itself,
they have full liberty to resell it or reengineer it.

The Open-Source Businesses

A community necessity not a business technique:
When open source first came into being, the consumers while being thrilled by
dirt cheap prices and unimagined liberty, wondered if there is any hidden catch.
It only recently dawned to many that Open Source is the result of the smaller world
and consequent competition. Moreover it is also an outcome of the lopsided superiority
of the monstrous monopoly. Many a times, have I heard that collectivism won't work
in business. Standards are corporate assets, they said. Now, contrary to all that,
standards are the assets of the community as a whole, and not any individual
corporation's. More and more business are reckoning that Open Source model is
the demand of the society and not any marketing trick. There is no catch, OS is
the new way of open competition.

Entrepreneur's dream - Equal playground - Drastic cost reduction :
Open source is good for the consumer. This is the ultimate check for monopoly,
albeit a community check. Proprietary is good only for the rarified areas; once
things are easy and common, open source makes it ubiquitous. And any thing that is
good for the consumers makes a good pretext for businessess. The consumer gains,
due to lowered costs, the budding entrepreneurs gain through newer avenues to go into
and be seen (by giving things for free); and the only losers are the old monopolies,
which not many regret.

Survival of the fittest:
Of course even the middle level companies are facing the brunt. The hitherto
closed business model has opened, too many players, good players, and hence too
much competition. The old secretive way of growing through sealing has been
rejected. It is not communism, but capitalism at its best. More innovation to the
society, more competition, greater quality, and above all the source is open.

It is a way of life:
Open source is a social change, which is affecting the business. Where
vast markets and micro payments is the basis. Long standing businesses mean
greater worth. This concept is leaking out of software, to other hardware and
services business too. As a way of life, and as an honest way to sell, it
is a modern paradigm, though very old in its origin. It is not easy to see
money in this modern show. Instead of just asking 'why Open source?', ask also
'how to use it'. The thing you give free today may not be as luring tomorrow.
Sometimes, selling it for money makes sense. OS means freedom, not simply free-of-cost.

Epilogue

Be prepared now:
Remember, all this is not happening in some other planet. It is here and here to stay.
Know how it is going to affect your carrier choices tomorrow, see how you can cash
in on it. Know the ethical angle and know the money angle. At TATTVUM, it is our
frank curiosity to know, how far can human mind allow open competition over secretive
individualism? How far can we push this model of internet based distributed
development, management and business?

Some plans :
We are still feeling our way around. To aid this search, as a community, we will
be publishing the best open source tools that we are using and how. For this,
we are starting a new archive on standard and checklists. There is one more step
we want take in coming weeks, namely a Software archive. But the beauty of
Internet amazes us, and we want to use it up as much as possible, before giving
our own twist on things. After this research phase, we intend to develop collectively,
solidly architectured software, which are commonly useful. As it is, our Article
archive explore the theoretical angle of distributed computing, our FAQ archive is to
concretize these questions away from the mist of ambiguity, and this Checklist
archive will be a concrete list of our answers from the net, and latter we will
start our own contribution to these questions and their answers.

References

True to the spirit of internet, this time I'll be just giving few keywords
for you to search in Google or other search engines (the secret point is, I didn't have
time to verify the URLs I have). Maybe I can directly give the href as Google's
search url, but settled for this. I also realize that there are some spelling mistakes
and misrepresentation here, but I believe google will take care of that.

Project Guttenberg hart free online books
This is a massive free project to convert all copyright expired books as text files
and as xml files (HTML writer's guild). You can get the whole works of Cannon Doyle,
Jane Austen etc.